


Devil in the Details

by Brumeier



Series: Killer Instinct [5]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Dark Character, Dreams, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Prison, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 04:37:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15356406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: John is a serial killer and Rodney is an accessory to murder, but he thinks he has a way out for both of them. If he can pull it off.





	Devil in the Details

**Author's Note:**

> written for whatif_au: Good Guys Go Bad/Bad Guys Go Good AU

John Sheppard brutally murdered people, and Rodney was in love with him.

It was a disheartening realization but true nonetheless. Fact: Rodney had a regular sexual rendezvous with John. Fact: Rodney had started researching possible victims that fit John’s murder profile and sending the information to John to act upon as he saw fit. Fact: Rodney was addicted to John in a way that was becoming steadily inescapable and he still couldn’t figure out what it was about the man that drew him in so inexorably.

_Rodney arched up off the bed, John nestled between his legs doing a masterful job of sucking him off while at the same time working three fingers up inside him. Rodney clutched at the bedsheets, mouth open and panting, his skin covered in a thin sheen of sweat._

The last time they’d had a post-murder tryst, Rodney set up a hidden camera. It didn’t record any sound but that was fine. He remembered all too well the sounds he’d made; the sounds John had wrung out of him.

Rodney had watched the tape countless time already.

_Before Rodney could come, John pulled off._ Don’t come until I tell you, _he said. John fucked him then, the two of them face to face. Always face to face. Rodney’s expression was desperate and filled with an uncomfortable amount of emotion._

_John gave Rodney the go-ahead and he came. Hard._

Rodney didn’t understand the people who made sex tapes. It was incredibly embarrassing, even though he was the only one watching. His orgasm face was awful.

_They lay together for a little while afterward, not talking. And then John got up and disappeared into the bathroom. He returned with a wet, warm washcloth and cleaned Rodney up. They kissed for a long time. Kissed until Rodney was unconscious._

The next scene was the reason for the hidden camera. No matter how deep their connection, John couldn’t seem to keep from drugging Rodney every time they hooked up. And always in a different way. Rodney had wanted to know what happened once he was down for the count. 

_John peeled something off his lips, thin and nearly invisible, and tossed it in the garbage. He laid down on the bed, curled up against Rodney’s unconscious body, and cried._

Rodney couldn’t tell if John made any noise, but his shoulders were shaking, and tears were freely flowing. Normally such a display of emotion would send Rodney running in the opposite direction; instead he wanted to hold John and promise him things would be okay. It was a foolish instinct, and all the evidence he needed to know he was in love with John.

He paused the clip, not needing to re-watch John’s cleanup routine and his respectful, almost delicate handling of Rodney’s body. On the laptop monitor John was frozen mid-cry, the anguish clear on his face.

Rodney needed to find a way out. For both of them. Because if they kept on the way they’d been, they’d get caught sooner or later. As it was, Rodney was frequently overwhelmed with guilt and anxiety and self-disgust. He couldn’t keep feeding John murder victims. And he couldn’t send John to his death by involving the authorities.

Rodney loved John, with all his darkness and childhood trauma. Loved him more than he’d ever loved anyone or anything in his life. The strength of his feeling was terrifying.

*o*o*o*

_I had the worst day_ , Jeannie said over the phone. She’d been calling more since Rodney had been wounded on the job.

“What happened?” Rodney asked, distracted. He was looking at files for some of the new cases he’d been assigned. No serial killers, because Rossman was worried that he’d gotten too deep investigating the Grandpa Killer. If he’d only known just how deep Rodney had gotten on that one.

_We were running late this morning and I had to get Maddie to school. I got pulled over for speeding._

“Uh huh.”

_I got a stern lecture about speeding with a child in the car, but he decided to write me up for obstructed view instead. Which is kind of bullshit, don’t you think?_

“Uh huh.”

_I mean, I was speeding. There was nothing obstructing my view, so why make something up? He said it was a lesser charge, like he was doing me a favor, but if he’d really wanted to do me a favor he’d have let me off._

“Uh huh.”

_And then he got in the front seat of the car and we just went at it like wild animals, all throbbing body parts and hands slapped on foggy windows._

“Uh huh. Wait. What?” Rodney tossed the file aside. 

_Ha! I knew you weren’t paying attention. Why do I even bother calling you?_

“I have no idea,” Rodney answered honestly. 

_Have you thought any more about taking a vacation? It’s only been a couple of months since you got shot._ Jeannie sounded honestly concerned, which was kind of nice.

“Where would I go on a vacation?”

_Some place where people wouldn’t be shooting at you, Mer. Have you considered Bora Bora?_

There was a knock on Rodney’s door, and he could detect the faint whiff of pizza.

“I have to go. Dinner’s here.”

_Another healthy meal I presume?_

“Tomatoes are good for preventing heart disease,” Rodney replied, looking around for his wallet. 

_All that cheese is going to clog your arteries, and you don’t need the carbs._

“What I don’t need is you nagging at me. Goodbye.”

_I’ll call you next week, Mer. Love you._

“Yeah, yeah. You too.” Rodney hung up the phone and retrieved his pizza. Maybe next time he’d get a vegetable on it to appease his health-minded sister. Then again, his eating habits were none of her business.

He returned to his casefiles, pizza in hand, and by the time he’d finished three quarters of the pie he’d already figured out the guilty party in one of the cases without having to do any additional leg work or research.

*o*o*o*

_Rodney sat at his desk in the office. It was completely normal except that everything was labeled FBI – the clock on the wall, the screensaver on every computer, the doors, even the stapler._

_“People!” Deputy Director Rossman emerged from his office and FBI was stitched across the front of his suit. “We’ve had a break in the Grandpa Killer case.”_

_Rodney panicked. Had they found John? Did they know about his connection to Rodney? He looked at his fellow agents but they were all staring in rapt attention at Rossman._

_“DNA was found on the latest victim. Hair, and some skin beneath the victim’s nails. The forensic lab is running tests as we speak.”_

_Everyone cheered except Rodney, who was suddenly sure that DNA was his. John had set him up, of course he had! Why wouldn’t he? All those times he’d drugged Rodney he’d probably snatched bits and pieces of his DNA for just this occasion. That was the only thing that made any sense about their relationship, because otherwise what were they doing?_

_“Meredith.”_

_Rodney looked up to see Jeannie standing next to his desk. She was dressed in the full red serge of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, hat and all. A horse loomed over her shoulder, bobbing its head._

_“Jeannie? You can’t have a horse in here. It’s unsanitary.”_

_“You need a rest, Mer. I came to take you on vacation.”_

_“I can’t go now!” Rodney protested. “There’s been a break in the case.”_

_“All work and no play. You know how that goes. Hop on and we’ll get out of here.”_

_There was no way in hell Rodney was getting on a horse. And no way he was going on vacation. He had to find out about the DNA test first. Maybe he was going to jail._

_“We have to hurry,” Jeannie said urgently. “Before they downgrade you.”_

_“Downgrade me? What are you talking about?”_

_“You’ll get a smaller room. Less perks.”_

_“Sometimes less is more,” Rossman said from the front of the room._

_Ginny from the forensics lab suddenly appeared, wearing a white lab coat and safety glasses and purple dishwashing gloves that went to her elbows. “I have the results!” she shouted, waving a manila envelope in the air._

_“It’s now or never,” Jeannie said._

_Ginny tore open the envelope and pulled out the contents, handing them to Rossman. The Deputy Director gave the information a quick glance before looking right at Rodney._

_“Agent McKay. A word.”_

Rodney jerked awake, gasping for breath. He knew what he had to do.

*o*o*o*

“Weapon, please,” the woman behind the bullet-proof glass asked in a tired, disinterested voice.

Rodney slid his gun across the small pass-through, where it was logged in, tagged, and put into a locked gun safe. He signed the requisite form, nervous at using his own name. He was taking a risk being there, but he’d had to come.

Armed guards buzzed him through the first set of doors, and then he underwent a second security scan before being ushered into one of the private conference rooms to wait. The FBI badge kept him from having to talk over the phone with a sheet of thick plexi between him and John.

Rodney paced the small, gray room while he waited, anxious and nervous. The last time he’d seen John had been during the court proceedings, and John had pretended he wasn’t there. Which was probably for the best, but Rodney couldn’t leave things that way between them. He had to make John understand why he’d done what he’d done.

The door opened and John came in, escorted by a guard. He was wearing the standard inmate uniform of blue pants and a blue shirt, and shackles that forced him to shuffle instead of walk. He dropped down into the chair on the far side of the table, his cuffs moved to the iron ring in the center.

“I’ll be outside,” the guard said, and then he was gone.

“Wasn’t expecting to see you,” John said conversationally. He leaned back as far as he could in the chair without over-extending his arms. “You look good.”

“So do you,” Rodney said. And it was true. He didn’t see any tension in John. He looked relaxed, if a man serving a prison sentence could be such a thing.

“Sit down.” John used his foot to push the other chair out, metal legs squealing on the concrete floor. “Stay a while. You in Toledo on a case, or just to see me?”

“Just you,” Rodney said. He looked down at his hands, which were clasped tightly together on the table top. “I don’t…I wasn’t lashing out at you. I want you to know that.”

John had been stoically silent all through the trial, except when he was put on the stand. His expression of remorse had sounded real, and he could’ve won an Oscar just on the sad, repentant looks he kept giving the jury. Rodney knew better, but that’s why he’d made sure John had the right lawyer, the right team, the right defense. He’d had to be circumspect about it, but Rodney had never doubted he was doing the right thing.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t sorry.

“You want me to stroke your ego, is that it?” John asked, somehow imbuing ‘stroke’ with a sexy undertone. “Tell you how smart you are?”

“No!” Rodney snapped, and he looked up to find John smirking at him, one eyebrow raised.

“You want me to thank you for putting me behind bars and taking all my personal freedoms away?”

“I don’t want your thanks or your validation. I just want you to know why.”

John leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I know.”

Rodney tried to read him, tried to see if that was true. And maybe he did want some validation after all, because the work he’d put into getting John arrested had been nothing short of genius. He’d meticulously planned every detail: the right victim, the right state, the right weapon. Getting John to Ohio had been simple enough, getting him off his usual MO had been tougher. But there’d been precedent, and Rodney didn’t hesitate to use it.

“Crime of passion,” John said. “In a state with lenient manslaughter laws. You’re not the only smart guy in the room, Agent McKay. What do you think happens next? Have you planned that far ahead?”

Of course he had. No-one made a plan like Rodney McKay.

“You serve your sentence, make use of the therapy available, and then we…then you can start over.”

John never left any physical evidence at his crime scenes, so it had been easy enough to get him to commit a lesser crime that couldn’t be tied back to the Grandpa murders. Serial killers didn’t get a seven-year sentence, five with good behavior. They got life without parole, or a death sentence. 

Rodney couldn’t send John to his death.

“You never struck me as an overly optimistic guy,” John said. His gaze on Rodney was like a laser, and under different circumstances Rodney might’ve thrown John on the table and had his way with him.

“This is a chance for you, John. Don’t waste it.”

“And I suppose you’ll be waiting for me on the other side?” The sarcasm was tempered with a vulnerability that John rarely let show.

Rodney covered John’s hands with his own, that one small point of physical contact making his chest constrict. “I will. You know I will.”

John’s expression softened, and he twisted his hands so they could slot their fingers together. “Okay.”

Prison was rough, Rodney knew that. Knew it wouldn’t be a picnic. But he also knew John could hold his own in there. He was charismatic, and he was dangerous. Rodney was also funneling some money in to make sure the guards kept John safe, all through second and third parties because he couldn’t have his name tied to John’s more than necessary.

John never asked for help. He never really asked for anything. And yet it was there, in that video Rodney had taken of them together. John’s drive to murder was something he couldn’t control. Something he hated having to do. And maybe breaking that cycle for the next five to seven years would be the end of it. Maybe John could have a measure of peace.

When the guard returned, Rodney wasn’t ready to say goodbye. But he backed away from the table while John was re-shackled and had to fight the urge to reach out as John shuffled towards the door. Before he was through it he turned and looked at Rodney.

“Thanks,” he said. “For everything.”

“I’ll be in touch,” Rodney promised.

He watched John go, feeling better than he had in weeks. The future was still uncertain, but he really believed things could change for them.

He’d make sure of it.

**Author's Note:**

>  **AN:** Well, I was looking for a way that John and Rodney could get a moderately happy ending and this is what I came up with. Now John can take a break from murdering father-figure replacements and Rodney can stop sending possible victims to John. Not sure what will happen once John’s sentence is up, but at least neither one of them died. Right? ::grins::


End file.
